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Dessert

Caramel Layer Cake

A layered cake made with eggs, butter, flour, baking soda, cream of tartar, flavoring powder, sugar, and milk, finished with caramel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Caramel Layer Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the flour

  1. Sift flour once.

  2. Add baking soda and flavoring powder to the sifted flour. Sift the mixture three times.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar thoroughly.

  2. Separate the eggs.

  3. Beat the yolks until light. Add half the cream of tartar to the yolks and mix well.

  4. Whip the egg whites to a light froth. Add the remaining cream of tartar to the egg whites. Whip the egg whites until stiff.

  5. Combine the milk, egg whites, and flour mixture. Stir until smooth.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake in two or three layers in a slow oven (300°F / 150°C) for 20 to 30 minutes. Increase heat slightly to finish baking for 10 to 20 minutes.

  2. Once cooled, use the cakes for filling and icing with cold caramel.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Whipped whites and yolks give the cake its light, airy structure.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it adds fat that gives tenderness and richness.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the egg whites, stabilizing them so they whip to a firmer foam.
Granulated sugar
Adds sweetness and, creamed with butter, helps trap air for a lighter crumb.

The step that matters

Whip the egg whites until stiff. Under-whipped whites collapse and deflate the batter, while over-whipped whites turn dry and grainy. Stiff, glossy peaks give the cake its lift when folded in.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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